Why Python 4.0 won't be like Python 3.0

[Tim Delaney]

On 19 August 2014 00:51, Grant Edwards <invalid at invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 2014-08-17, Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> > A blog from Nick Coghlan
> > http://www.curiousefficiency.org/posts/2014/08/python-4000.html that
> > should help put a few minds to rest.
>
> I agree with the comments that the appellation for "simply the next
> version after 3.9" should be 3.10 and not 4.0.  Everybody I know
> considers SW versions numbers to be dot-separated tuples, not
> floating point numbers.
>
> To all of us out here in user-land a change in the first value in the
> version tuple means breakage and incompatibilities. And when the
> second value is "0", you avoid it until some other sucker has found
> the bugs and a few more minor releases have come out.
>

 No. A major version increase *may* introduce breakage and
incompatibilities. It does not mean that it *has* to introduce breakage and
incompatibilities. If the major version increase is documented as "just
being the next version" then there's no reason to avoid it - unless your
policy is "wait for the first patch release" i.e. never take major.minor.0
but always wait for major.minor.1.

What is more important is that minor and patch version increases should
avoid introducing breakage and incompatibilities wherever possible
(security fixes are one reason to allow incompatibility in a minor release).

BTW I agree with the idea that 4.0 would be an appropriate time to remove
anything that has been deprecated for the requisite number of versions.

Tim Delaney
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